Greg Grandin Quotes

We know that enlightened capital didn't get rid of the slave trade.

People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true: People were taken from Africa, among them healers and priests, and were made into slaves.

The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have been cited. It has been said that those petitions were not received.

I want Cuba ... I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery

There are few areas so advantages to the use of slaves as gold mining.

The Atlantic Slave Trade was greatest planned accumulation of wealth that the world has ever known.

I have never been able to procure sufficient slaves to cultivate my lands and that of any guilt that attached to this trade we [planters] were at most but partners with the Parliament which tolerated it, and the country which profited so much from it.

Without the institution of slavery, civilization would never have been achieved, for no one could ever have done anything intellectual if he had to spend all his time hewing and digging and fighting.

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

The Slave Trade, though nominally abolished, is actively pursued here, eighty-three slaves having been landed just before my arrival, and another cargo during my stay.

The mere toleration of the slave trade could not make slavery itself - the right of property in man - lawful any where; not even on board the slave ship. Toleration of a wrong is not law.

The slaves had food stamps, too. It was called 'scraps from Massa's table.'

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.

Decolonization actually boosted slavery. As foreign powers withdrew from the colonies, people were enslaved by their own countrymen. And we see it in Africa, we see it in Asia.

Wealthy men, too, like several of those in our neighborhood, had so many slaves that they were compelled to buy other plantations on which to employ them.

What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization?

The market value of slaves in 1860 exceeded that of the entire nation’s railroads and factories put together … it was, relative to the gross national product in today’s economic values in excess of $9.6 Trillion.

I purchase slaves and manumit [free] them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution

They [Indians] have so long been recognized as slaves in our law, that it would be as great a violation of the rights of property to establish a contrary doctrine at the present day, as it would in the case of Africans, and as useless to investigate the manner in which they originally lost their freedom.

The commerce of this country is almost entirely confined to slaves

Slavery, which has been abolished in Africa, is to be introduced in Europe. The German people are ready to make good the damage done. But we are not prepared to perish for the benefit of international capitalists.

Slave-traders have always been very much at the mercy of the chiefs through whose country they have passed; for if they afforded a ready asylum for runaway slaves, the traders might be deserted at any moment.

They compelled the Portuguese traders to pay for water, wood, and even grass, and every possible pretext was invented for levying fines; and these were patiently submitted to so long as the slave-trade continued to flourish.

The institution of slavery in U. S. A. was Christian, and Christianity was slave-holding there.

The profit-grinding system is maintained by competition, or veiled war, not only between the conflicting classes, but also within the classes themselves: there is always war among the workers for bare subsistence, and among their masters, the employers and middle-men, for the share of the profit wrung out of the workers; lastly, there is competition always, and sometimes open war, among the nations of the civilised world for their share of the world-market.